Nicolas Freeling: Gun Before Butter (USA 2007)

From the Publisher:
Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger award and the French Grand Prix de Roman Policier for Best Crime Novel of the Year
"An absolute joy to read... Freeling deserves a serious revival" -- The Weekly Standard

When you're in love, the whole world speaks of your beloved. Certainly this is true for Inspector Van der Valk, though it takes some time for him to recognize the cause of his condition. The beloved in this instance is Lucienne Engelbert, the beautiful, troubled daughter of a well known conductor, now orphaned and running riot through Amsterdam. And calling Lucienne to mind is everything and everyone that Van der Valk encounters, from an embittered piano-dealer to a secluded fishing lodge, from a garrulous mechanic to an expensive, abandoned car. Clearly, all roads that Van der Valk is traveling lead back to Lucienne. But is love the only connection? Or could Lucienne possibly have something to do with the murder that Van der Valk is investigating?

Who's Likely to Like This?
Fans of Georges Simenon

Design: Margaret L. Frank / GraphicsCount.com
Cover Photo: Photos.com, Element Photo / Stockfood

Nicolas Freeling: Gun Before Butter. The 3rd Van der Valk Mystery. Felony & Mayhem, ISBN: 1933397756 (July, 2007), 225 p., $14.95.

Nicolas Freeling: Gun Before Butter (USA 2001)

From the Publisher:
A Van der Valk Thriller - Winner of the Crime Writer's Award and the Grand Prix de Roman Policier.
Police Inspector Piet Van der Valk becomes involved in an extraordinary case when he crosses the path of a pretty daughter of a famous dead conductor. This terse crime thriller follows Van der Valk on an exhilarating ride through the unknown.

Nicolas Freeling: Gun Before Butter. A Van der Valk Thriller. House of Stratus, ISBN: 1842328387 (June, 2001), 204 p., $9.95.

Nicolas Freeling: Gun Before Butter (USA 1982)

From the Publisher:
GUN BEFORE BUTTER
Called by the Observer "the best and deepest of Freeling's books," this investigation of a seemingly senseless murder in Amsterdam not only sends Inspector Van der Valk to France, but involves him emotionally as well.

Nicolas Freeling: Gun Before Butter. An Inspector Van der Valk Novel of Suspense. Vintage Books, ISBN: 0394752309 (June, 1982), 224 p., $2.95.

Nicolas Freeling: Gun Before Butter (UK 1975)

From the Publisher:
The man lay half on a chair and half on the floor, face down, head hanging, limp as a thread of cotton.
A spring-blade pocket-knife was jammed between his ribs.

'The sensation of fear, of excitement, of shock at seeing a dead body where none should be - though one may have seen many more. The professional quickening, the trained instinctive shift into a top gear of observation and heightened sensitivity. The satisfaction that one was right; it will be an interesting business.'

Van der Valk had all these professional sensations. But he felt as well the sharp pull of reality; here is a man who until a few hours ago was an alert, breathing human being.'

'Fascinating combination of criminal investigation with genuinely tragic love story. The best and deepest of Freeling's books' -- Maurice Richardson in the Observer
Winner of the Crime Writers' Award and the Grand Prix de Roman Policier

Cover design by Robert Hollingsworth, photograph by Peter Barbieri

Nicolas Freeling: Gun Before Butter. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1975, ISBN: 0140022805, 224 p., 60p.

Nicolas Freeling: Gun Before Butter (UK 1965)

From the Publisher:
In Gun Before Butter, Nicolas Freeling's third novel, two identities dissolve at the moment when a knife is jammed between the ribs of an unknown man in Amsterdam.

'My whole idea,' states one of Freeling's characters, 'was to write about Europe in a European idiom. Something that has a European flavour and inflection.' If this was also Nicolas Freeling's intention, what a triumphant start he has made to his un-American activities! Here are characters that are subtle rather than tough; dialogue that echoes real life; settings (in the Low Countries) exactly inventoried; and, in Van der Valk, the Dutch inspector, a detective as human and unorthodox as Maigret himself.

His first three books grade this cosmopolitan writer almost in a class with Simenon and Dürrenmatt, in what begins to take shape as a distinctively European school of 'crime' that is far more than 'crime'.

'Has established himself as the most interesting new crime writer for some years' - Maurice Richardson in the Observer
Love in Amsterdam and Because of the Cats are appearing simultaneously in Penguins.

Cover design and photograph by Denise York

Nicolas Freeling: Gun Before Butter. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1965, Penguin Book #2280, 224 p., 5'6.